Transcend
by GEFM 420
Summary: Chloe dies and Clark reflects on her death in the future. Sad but cute. I figured we need this now in case Chloe did die at the end of this season.


**Title: Transcend  
Author: GEFM  
Rating: K  
Genre: General and Romance  
Disclaimer: I own nothing and have no friends.**

In the dark of the night I can still hear her. The soft words, the unmistakable cry clear as a bell. Like she was still sleeping next to me, whispering to me the reminder of the greatest tragedy of my life.

Her hair whips around me and I can almost feel it caress my skin, the bare rise and fall of my chest. Her hand is there, guiding my heart and I can almost sense it.

But I can't. All I have left are memories that serve little more than to put a bitter taste into my mouth.

I'm not broken, because I can't be. I don't even have that consolation. Yet she, the woman who once embodied strength and fortitude, lies twisted with all the fragility of a butterfly. Once its wings are touched so diminished is its ability to fly.

I hunched over her coffin, hugging it the way she'd always held me. Like she'd never let go, like we'd be forever. Like she loved me.

Pete rescued me from the scene, dragging me away from her resting-place. I returned the very same night and slept next to her grave. I couldn't sleep any other place for nearly a month.

I never cried.

There is too much to mourn; the death of a girl too young; the death of a partner; the death of a friend; the death of love; the death of reason.

How can anyone find closure in that? Worlds will come to an end before I can begin to put her behind me. She is of me, in every way that my heart is.

She is my soul, my wisdom, and my humanity. Today, tomorrow and a hundred years to come.

I never told her how I felt or who I knew we were. I understand that now. There was too much truth in those words. The emotion was so irrepressible and inexorable that I would never be able to control it.

It is painful to be attached to someone that way. When you'd go to the ends of the earth just to spend five minutes with them or when you would sacrifice everything for their well being.

And sometimes it can be beautiful, unparalleled to any heightened experience I've ever come across.

Maybe I never had it with her, at least not what we wanted it to be, but there was a brief moment when I looked upon her and knew she was it.

Long as it may have taken me, the passion that poured through me then wracks my body still, reminiscing how amazing it had been to touch her and know that she was mine forever.

After I had run away to commence training inside the Fortress. "Predictable" she would have said. I needed to get my mind off her and onto the more pressing matter of accepting destiny that has no reality without my will. Unfortunately, it didn't go that smoothly. I came to spend every rest period replaying everything and scrutinizing my choices.

There must've been something I could have done.

And now I was in the final stage of my bildungsroman journey standing before a reformed man, who had once again turned himself into something respectable in this business. I could tell he was going to dismiss me regardless of the promises he might have made as a perpetually inebriated tabloid writer.

I hear her again, vocalizing to me words of encouragement and advice. She tells me to refuse to be rejected, to be the assertive man I was out there, here in this newsroom.

He extends his hand and I shake it gladly because I could hardly believe that I had persuaded him. My first real salary paying job. It was a proud moment for me.

But I also knew that way up there was a woman who was more proud of me than she'd ever been in her short life. She was not scornful or regretful because she wasn't that way. She would never take her sacrifice back.

When they started calling me "Superman", I immediately thought of her. Was it merely a coincidence that the collective media would tag line me with the very same moniker she'd been calling me for many years prior? I can't help but think she was the muse for that one.

The second I'm out of the Planet and into my new outfit I soar into the sky, high as I can go without leaving earth. I stand listening again and hear the chaos of the world clamoring around me. 7 billion people living.

Here I am waiting for one person who is not. I wanted to share this gift with her the most, I knew she would appreciate the experience more than any one I could ever come to meet. So I came today to show her. I wasn't strong enough before.

I offer her my hand and she takes it enthusiastically, grinning in that fashion that just made her, her. I held her waist as we moved in time with the music. She listened intently to my account of the encounter with Perry White earlier today.

She grows quiet, satisfied to be here with me. She tells me she loves me. She always has, she always will. I smile down on her and brush the hair away from her face. I don't say a thing, because I've been robbed of my speech.

I kiss her and stall for a response. I didn't have the words to describe this, even now.

"Thank you." In my mind we are still 15 year olds surrounded by a sea of meaningless others faded into the background. All we are is together and we are everything. We are honest, happy, and passionate as one. I move on in celebration, indulging in the satin feel of her dress on my non-callused fingertips.

There is no music here, neither is there a girl by my side accompanying my encircling arms. I keep my eyes closed, ignorant to reality.

I am who I am today because of this. I am a reporter. I am a hero. She was both before I had ever been selfless enough to recognize what my duties would entail.

She died for me to be these things. I fight everyday to preserve that sacrifice. For every person saved there is a person given a second chance at life. She did that for them, for all people of the world.

There's so much left in our past, entangling and strangling us it's hard to see anything else sometimes.

Except now it all escapes us. No one can recall the pain, only the good.

In the picture of our lives all that blurs and falls away. It's just us again, alone in a room with 70 faceless people.

And we keep on dancing; two broken hearts amongst the weightless clouds.


End file.
